User talk:Kearnsdm
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[edit] Welcome!Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia from SqueakBox! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:
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Again, welcome SqueakBox 03:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC) [edit] VandalsimNot an easy question, you can report it if it is persistent here Wikipedia:Vandalism, mostly I just revert, there are aids to this such as pop-ups but I just use Mozilla tabs and the excellent diffs system wikipedia offers. Do mark any vandalism revert as a minor edit and you can use {{test1}} template, building to test3 etc, leaving the template message on the user talk page of repeat offenders. Vandalsim is an enormous problem opn wikipedia and worse than it was. Hope this helps, SqueakBox 16:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC) [edit] Direct Instruction Page needs youIs there anyway you could neutralize but add back in the relevent things that were removed from the Direct Instruction wiki page? You did such an awesome job on whole language.... --Harriska2 18:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC) [edit] whole languageI defer to you. It's all yours now. --Merceris 03:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC) [edit] Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates/Requests/February 2007/kearnsdmHi. I'm interested in taking up this case. I'll take a look at the Whole language article and have a word with other editors as relevant. Anything you want to say to me in the meantime you can contact on my talk page, or by email. Regards SilkTork 18:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC) Hi. I'm closing the case as Merceris has clearly decided not to get involved. If there are any further issues please let me know. Regards SilkTork 08:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC) Following all of your suggestions in your last reversion of the United States subsection of the Illiteracy section of the Literacy article, I submit the following. If you reject this very-much-shorter and yet very-factual description of the actual status of illiteracy in the U.S., I will find it very difficult to conclude anything other than that (a) you are a politician or educator intent upon "protecting your profession" from facts about U.S. illiteracy that makes your profession look bad, or (b) you are so intent upon being "in control" of what appears in this article that you neither know nor care about the true extent of U.S. illiteracy and the EXTENT and SERIOUSNESS of the effect upon over 90 million U.S. adults. I have been researching and writing about U.S. literacy since 1985 when I read Jonathan Kozol's shocking book, Iliterate America, and saw the serious physical, emotional, mental, and financial problems that illiterate must constantly endure. Kozol wrote about illiterates he knew and loved. He was a fifth and sixth grade teacher in Boston for a few years. I am the founding chairman of a nonprofit educational organization, Literacy Research Associates, Inc. and am Vice President of Research & Development for another nonprofit educational corporation. I was a Chemical Engineer, Aerospace Engineer, and Saftey Engineer for 29 years. In my positon as Safety Engineer, if I was not very thorough and careful in researching the possibility of unintended explosive initiation of solid propellant rocket motor fuel, dozens of people could die and millions of dollars of equipment, facilities, and rocket motors at a $400 million rocket motor manufacturing facility (Hercules, Inc., Magna, Utah) could be destroyed. I would be interested in knowing your credentials and from whence you derived your authority to have the final say on what appears in this article. There are various definitions of literacy. Although it may be in the short-term best interests of politicians and educators to believe that adults who can only read a few hundred or even a couple of thousand simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school are literate, the most comprehensive study of U.S. adult literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government proves that such adults are functionally illiterate--they cannot read well enough to hold a good job. What good is a person’s reading ability if they read so poorly that they do not like to read and seldom do so--several studies have shown that millions of Americans never read another book after leaving school--or if they cannot read well enough to hold an above-poverty-level job? The Adult Literacy in America study[1] released to the media on September 8, 1993 involved lengthy interviews of over 26,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in twelve states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This study showed the percentages of U.S. adults who worked full-time, part-time, were unemployed, or who had given up looking for a job and were no longer in the work force, and it showed the average hourly wages for those who were employed. These data were grouped by literacy level--how well they responded to material written in English that they were given to read--and proved that 40 to 44 million of the 191 million U.S. adults (21 to 23 percent of them) in the least literate group earned a yearly average of $2105 and about 50 million adults (25 to 28 percent of them) in the next-least literate of the five literacy groups earned a yearly average of $5225 at a time when the U.S. Census Bureau considered the poverty level threshold for an individual to be $7363 per year.[2] The report of a follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in 2006 that showed no statistically significant improvement in U.S. adult literacy. This report did not include data on average hourly earnings and therefore required reference to the 1993 report for the complete description of functional illiteracy.[3] What these figures mean is that a minimum of 46 and a maximum of 51 percent of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn significantly below the threshold poverty level for an individual. The only reason we do not see that number of families in poverty is that most low-income families have more than one employed adult and almost all low-income families receive financial assistance from the government (from our taxes), from family, from friends, and/or from charitable organizations. You did not question my motivation, but I questioned yours. I apologize. A person's motivation should never be questioned for at least two very practical reasons: (1) they probably will not tell you, and (2) they may not have carefully thought out their deeper motivations and are only aware of their more benign, more socially acceptable motivations. You were polite enough not to ask, but I will tell you. Most people, because of the importance they personally place upon financial rewards, will think that my real motivation is to make a lot of money on my book. That is definitely not my real motivation. If it were, I would have given up a long time ago. I have been struggling on this humanitarian project of improving literacy since 1985 after learning of the SERIOUSNESS of its effect, primarly upon the illiterates themselves, but also because of its affect upon taxpayers, consumers of purchased items, and upon the well-being of our nation--its success in communicating in the English language with other nations and in holding down the negative trade balance and in the exportation of jobs to other nations with a higher percentage of more literate workers willing to work for lower wages. Although my motivation got a big boost when I learned the EXTENT of functional literacy after reading the report of the 1993 literacy study, it still did not translate into increased sales of my book. In fact, although I have probably spent the equivalent of at least ten years full-time writing my book (which at well-below minimum wages would equal over $100 K) and spent at least $30 K on computer hardware and software and office supplies and marketing programs, I have, to date, received less than $100 income from my book. My REAL motivation is to lessen the suffering of hundreds of millions of functionally illiterate English-speaking people around the world. I realize there is no way I can convince you of that, but the fact that I am retired and debt-free and that my social security, pension, annuity, and wife's salary--at least for the next year or two before she retires--provides all the living expenses we expect for the foreseeeable future. We live a very modest life and I have absolutely no desire for wealth and all the complications it always entails.Bob C. Cleckler 21:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC) I just realized that I have failed to explain to you what is perhaps most important of all: the reason I am so intent that readers of the Wikipedia article on literacy know the true extent of illiteracy in the U.S. As you know, human beings resist change--even change for the better. A perfect example is a dangerous intersection badly in need of a traffic light. Several near misses alert people to the need, but the need may go unmet for years until someone is killed at the intersection. I know this happens because in is exactly what happened at an intersection near my home. People will very often ignore a problem until the problem becomes obvious to nearly everyone in a manner that they cannot CONTINUE to ignore. Unless people know the true extent of U.S. illiteracy, they are not going to take the actions necessary because of the pain of change. There have been hundreds of warning signs about U.S. illiteracy and dozens of newspaper and magazine articles and books explaining the need for the last seventy years. Unfortunately almost everyone reading such articles either (1) disbelieve them and they say, "After all, I can read and all my friends and associates can read" (not realizing that many people they think can read well actually read so poorly they are functionally illiterate) or (2) say, "That's not MY problem, I don't know what to do about it." For these and other reasons there has been absolutely NO EFECTIVE changes made. So-called reading experts come up with some "new" minor variation or combination of whole word and phonics every four or five years so that their publisher can sell millions of "new, improved" reading textbooks. The teachers are complicit in maintaining the "status quo" because they naturally resist change and because they consciously--or subconsciously--realize that if students learn to read English fluently in only three or four months, their services as a reading teacher will be greatly diminished. Never mind that learning to read in three or four months will place U.S. students on an equal footing with over 98% of all other languages that use an alphabet and thereby help, not only the individual students, but also our nation in its competition with every other nation which is rapidly improving technologically and becoming increasingly competitive. Notice that I said "use an alphabet" rather than calling English "an alphabetic language"--it isn't. In short, if people don't know how serious the problem is, they will see no reason to change.Bob C. Cleckler 22:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC) [edit] Reverted edits on Alphabetic Principle articleHi, Kearnsdm. Thank you for letting me know why you reverted my edits, and for doing so kindly. :-) Are you certain that your reasons follow Wikipedia policy? I'm trying to contribute according to the policies and guidelines I've found, but they do seem endless --- I keep finding new ones! That said, my understanding from the self-identified "official" Wikipedia:Editing policy is that "... perfection is not required." Here's an excerpt taken directly from the policy:
Perhaps there is another policy that supercedes this one? If so, please point me in the right direction so I can follow the latest policies and guidelines. Thanks much, Rosmoran 08:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] U.S. LiteracyI will place my comments in bold italics to easily distinguish them from your comments. Although you have given a fairly extensive reply, you mentioned very few of the details of my last two emails. I do not know, of course, if that is because you did not want to take the time to read everything or because you did not want to mentally grapple with what I wrote and therefore merely scanned what I wrote. Perhaps it is because, as the familiar couplet states: A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. Although you did not answer me point-for-point, I will attempt to do so for what you have written-- for all the significant points, at least. Thank you for the extensive explanation you gave for your perspective. I'll respond in parts. First, let me say thank you for your apology. Second, let me say that, in principle, I agree with you. Illiteracy is a very serious problem and should not be overlooked or underestimated. Third, I am not sure I agree with your interpretations of the Adult Literacy in America study. Your characterization of the Levels identified in the report differs qualitatively from my reading of it. First, you link decoding ability and illiteracy in ways that the report does not. I do not know what you mean by this. The report groups them into five literacy levels depending upon how well they are able to perform certain tasks given them after reading something in English--basically a functional literacy test. They must “decode” what they are given to read, if you want to use that term, but in nothing I have sent you have I linked decoding and levels of literacy. Furthermore, the report describes Level 1 in a way that reveals its heterogeneity, which your edit did not. I have never denied the heterogeneity of the interviewees. I did, however, say that the interviewees were chosen to be statistically the same as the U.S. population. It is therefore a mistake to “excuse” their illiteracy because they are old or foreign-born or did not finish high school. Doing so plays right into the hands of educators and politicians who say, “It is not our fault they cannot read; it’s their lousy social condition,” in the same way that defense lawyers try to get the sentence reduced for someone convicted of a serious crime by shifting the blame for the crime from the criminal to the victim. This type of thinking shifts the blame from the GUILTY (the educators, politicians, the society, and the illiterates who make no serious attempt at learning to read) to the VICTIM: (1) the illiterates who must suffer serious problems because of their illiteracy, (2) the literate portion of society who must support the illiterates with time and money as well as with their taxes and by having to buy higher-priced consumer goods, and (3) our nation in trade deficits and communication efforts with other nations. Regardless of the REASON they cannot read, the intention of our government and educational system is that ALL of them should be literate so that they are not a burden upon society. Regardless of any effect of the heterogeneity, the percentage of illiterates is FAR too high, hurting both the illiterates and the rest of society. The individuals at Level 1 are a very diverse group of individuals and their large numbers are partly explained by factors not related to the American education system (i.e., many have intellectual disabilities, are over the age of 65, and are recent immigrants). The authors concluded that this latter group accounted for a great proportion of Level 1. I am not trying to trivialize the seriousness of the problem, but it is important to lay bare the details of the report in order to understand the nature of the problem. I fully understand the nature of the problem--that is why I am unwilling to excuse ANY PART of the problem. Fourth, it probably makes sense to restrain the section on illiteracy in the United States despite the laudable principle underlying your changes. I think that we can take some of the material from the report to present a pithy summary of its findings. What we should avoid is polemical language. If I have learned anything from the current age of American politics, it is that citizens are constantly bombarded by the "hard sell," and they are sick of it. Therefore, we should be careful to present only the facts about the proportion of Americans whose literacy skills are quite limited and leave it to the reader to generate his/her own outrage. Advocacy, although important, is not the purpose of an encyclopedic entry. To be frank, I think that the section on U.S. illiteracy, as written before the edits, captured the most salient facts from the report. Of everything you have said, this is where I disagree with you most strongly. How can you possibly think that a Wikipedia article saying only that (1) 14 percent of U.S. adults read at “below basic” in prose literacy (without knowing what “below basic” is or how far below “basic” they were) and then, in effect, excuse that fact by explaining the heterogeneity of the interviewees, (2) saying that the quantitative literacy scores improved 8 points (meaningless unless you know the before and after scores) while the prose and document literacy scores did not change much from 1992 (without explaining what quantitative, prose, and document scores mean), and (3) giving a few details about how the literacy scores of blacks, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Whites, and college graduates changed between 1992 and 2003 can honestly present as accurate a picture of U.S. literacy as showing the average annual earnings of the two least literate groups when compared to the threshold poverty level? Ask yourself: “Why do most parents want their children to learn to read?” If you come up with an answer other than “so they can get a good-paying job,” I’ll be surprised. There are several definitions of literacy, but none of them is as accurate as a definition that measures the EFFECTIVENESS of the reading ability as does the earnings-level they can achieve, because very few people can AFFORD to accept a job that pays less than they are capable of earning. It is true that a few children of wealthy parents--in the rare situation that the parents do not care if the children learn to read or not--may not care about how much a job pays or that a few people enjoy a certain job so much that they do not care that it is a low-paying job, but MOST people do not have that luxury. In your edit, you outlined ways in which the report could be examined more deeply to calculate the financial impact of illiteracy, for example. You make a very good case, but it is a case best made in an advocacy book--as you have already done! Finally, I want to urge you to consider viewing educators, "experts" (by which I imagine you refer to educational researchers), and even politicians somewhat differently. I have no doubt that your charges--that educators can be resistant, that experts can be corrupt, and that politicians can be callous--have merit in some (and in the case of politicians, perhaps many) cases. I do not share your bleak perspective on the whole. I find it difficult to believe that teachers would renounce effective educational practices for fear of losing their jobs, especially in the current educational climate. When I said that teachers want to maintain the status quo, I obviously did not mean ALL of them, just an overly large percentage of them--because of the nature of human resistance to change. Primarily what I was saying is that the reason there has been absolutely NO EFFECTIVE change in reading education for the last 70 years or more--which is provably true--is BECAUSE of this resistance to change. People are usually more willing to endure the inconvenience and problems of the known than to accept change bringing the unknown--even if the unknown is potentially very beneficial. If there were a 3-month magic bullet, as you suggested, I feel certain that many schools desperately trying to reach AYP would be using it already. There IS a 3-month magic bullet, but people have a “blind spot” about it. It is English spelling reform. Forty years of experience by Frank Laubach, founder of Laubach Literacy International, proves that phonemic spelling is the magic bullet. In his books "Forty Years With the Silent Billion" and "Teaching the World to Read" he relates forty years of experience in teaching adult illiterates around the world to read in over 300 alphabetic languages. In 295 languages other than English--over 98 percent of the 300 or more languages--he could teach them to read fluently in less than three months. In some of the simpler languages--such as some dialects of the Philippine language--he could teach them to read fluently in ONE DAY. As far as grammar and syntax are concerned, English is neither among the easiest nor among the most difficult languages. It is easier than some of the European languages, for example--languages in which students learn to read fluently in less than three months. But English spelling is by FAR the worst in the entire world. When those who speak another language complain about the difficulty of learning English, they are usually complaining about learning to READ it. Unless they have an English-speaking teacher or an audio recording, they have absolutely no UNFAILING way relating the written words to the spoken English words they may know. Almost every branch of learning is frequently updated--but not spelling. Although the pronunciation of English words has changed with time, the spelling has been frozen since Samuel Johnson’s dictionary was published in 1755. Although several nations both larger and smaller than the U.S. and both advanced and developing nations HAVE simplified their spelling, a phonemic spelling in English has never been tried. Although there have been several influential people over the years who have advocated English spelling reform, NO ONE has had any significant effect. Noah Webster managed to simplify and regularize a few dozen words in “American English” spelling in the 1800s; no one else has had any significant impact because of the “blind spot” mentioned above. The blind spot exists for several reasons. Perhaps the main ones are: (1) people think it would be too difficult, (2) people think that if it were a good idea, our leaders would have implemented it already, (3) people think it has already been tried and it failed, (4) people immediately think of objections that they believe makes it impractical, or (5) or people say, “Spelling reform is not my job. There’s nothing I can do about it.” Basically, they can all be summarized by saying they are simply resisting change because the truth about spelling reform and its very significant benefits have not been explained to them. None of these five reasons--or any others you can name--are valid. Several scholars with very impressive credentials, including a lifetime of work devoted to English spelling, have thoroughly debunked every reasonable objection to spelling reform. With experts, the Reading First scandal certainly revealed the true colors of a few important leaders in literacy education, but many others remain unblemished and their work important. If you applied to publishers alone the words you reserved for all "experts" I would have agreed with you; their motivations are very far from pure. The experts I was talking about work for the publishers or are under a temporary contract to them. But even experts who work with them are often doing very good and important work. I will waste few words on politicians, but I think we should consider their views with strong skepticism but without cynicism--even when they come from corners we do not expect. No Child Left Behind is an interesting piece of legislation in this regard; its pedigree is at the same time conservative and liberal and there are many good ideas within it, whatever your political perspective (although the left and right might not agree on what is good about it). I use that important piece of legislation to illustrate how skepticism but not cynicism is critical in considering the politics of literacy. To close, let me restate the most important points I have to make, the first being that your passion is, in m view, well placed and your energy and enthusiasm a great asset. Secondly, it may benefit you to channel your passion toward your advocacy work and focus your Wikipedia articles on the essential facts of the topics in which you are interested. I do believe the saying, however banal, that that the truth will set us free; given this, it makes little sense to confine the truth in polemical language. I would like to work with you on the Reading education article to pare and shape it somewhat. I look forward to your response. Most sincerely, Kearnsdm 07:23, 27 June 2007 (UTC)Bob C. Cleckler 03:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC) [edit] Citations and Original researchHello, again Kearnsdm. Note: The text you left for me begins at the left margin. My responses are indented by 1 paragraph. Hello again Rosmoran. I am reverting your "needs citation" and "original research" tags to the phonics page. Synthesizing extant information is not the same as creating new claims. In Adams' book, she gives a detailed history of the controversy to that point. In the NRC book, Snow, Burns, and Griffin again give a history of the controversy to that point, so the claim of original research is unfounded. Those sources are the sources from which the information was taken.
Let me be frank that I am a little concerned about the frequency with which you are tagging articles as unreferenced or as original research. I think that in many cases you are correct, but that in others, it does not seem appropriate. If you are concerned about a lack of references, I might humbly suggest that you find these references yourself so that these articles are not consumed and abased by these tags. It seems to me that you know a great deal about these topics, so this seems perfectly appropriate. If we want people to use Wikipedia as a source of information about literacy, and I think that they should, given the quality of some of the articles in this area, we need to fix articles instead of merely marking them up with tags that make them look like the work of amateurs, which in many cases they are not.
If you would like to examine a page that contains original research, you might look at NuEnglish or Reading education, both of which--in my view--embody the problem with original research. In fact, I have long considered rewriting the reading education page, but have not yet done so. As you recommended on the literacy page, the literacy instruction section could be separated and, I think, could replace the original research (and the non-encyclopedic style) on the Reading Education page. I would be interested in your views on this, but I think it is most important for you to see a page that exemplifies that "Original research" problem regardless of whether you think the literacy instruction content could replace the OR on the reading education page.
Best, Rosmoran 06:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC) [edit] Wikimania in Atlanta! Hi! I noticed your involvement on U.S. South-related articles, categories and WikiProjects, and I wanted to let you know about a bid we're formulating to get next year's Wikimania held in Atlanta! If you would like to help, be sure to sign your name to the "In Atlanta" section of the Southeast team portion of the bid if you're in town, or to the "Outside Atlanta" section if you still want to help but don't live in the city or the suburbs. If you would like to contribute more, please write on my talk page, the talk page of the bid, or join us at the #wikimania-atlanta IRC chat on freenode.org. Have a great day! P.S. While this is a template for maximum efficiency, I would appreciate a note on my talk page so I know you got the message, and what you think. This is time-sensitive, so your urgent cooperation is appreciated. :) Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 07:25, 4 September 2007 (UTC) [edit] Reading skills acquisitionHi—Avmanzo made essentially the same huge addition about motor imaging that you reverted in December. You might want to chime in on my comments on his talk page—I'm especially concerned about a possible conflict of interest. Thanks. —johndburger 04:03, 18 January 2008 (UTC) [edit] updates to dyslexia pageHi, Kearnsdm, I'll give it a try ..... happy new year to you and yours. Rosmoran (talk) 04:07, 23 January 2008 (UTC) [edit] email addressHi, Kearnsdm, You can send me email to sami-moran@sbcglobal.net. I have lots of sources, too, so between us we should be able to draft something workable. Take care, |
